Eps 111: Fear, Belonging, Self Acceptance…. It’s all here.

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Welcome to joyful courage, a conscious parenting podcast episode 111

Hey everybody. Welcome back to joyful courage, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey, I am your host, Casey o'wardy, positive discipline trainer and parent coach, and I'm thrilled that you are listening in if you find yourself laughing, taking notes and excited about what you hear on the show today. Do me a favor and pay it forward. Share this episode with your friends, family, neighbors, strangers, posted on social media. Your sharing is the reason I am able to show up for you each week, and I'm so honored to do so. So as I've mentioned the last few solo shows. You know, I'm not only a podcast host, I'm also a podcast listener and a podcast advocate, and I wanted to share some of the amazing shows that I listened to with you. This week, I am sharing a new show called a free spirit life, hosted by my friend and soon to be podcast guest, Shannon Kinney do. Shannon and her partner Ashley Walburn interviewed me last spring on their show, which is called a mindful mama movement. Shannon now hosts her own show, and I think you're gonna love it. It's brand new, and it's a show where Shannon inspires women to feel more joy, Ignite and nurture their creativity and cultivate the courage that they need to live an authentic, imperfect and more peaceful life. Here's Shannon,

Speaker 1 1:55
hi, joyful courage community. My name is Shannon Kinney dew, and I'm a huge fan of Casey and her show, and I'm really excited to bring you my new podcast, a free spirit life. A free spirit life helps women who want to live each day more connected to the precious moments that make life so rich and meaningful. Living a free spirit life is about exploration and discovery. It's about learning to trust yourself. It's about cultivating your creativity and finding the courage to follow your heart. It's about embracing and perfection in the messy parts of life. It's about being vulnerable and learning how to take healthy risk. It's about carving your own path and celebrating who you are and who you are becoming. In this podcast, we share powerful interviews and wisdom that will help you live a more authentic, creative and soulful life. Visit a freespiritlife.com and check out our monthly membership program, the live freely circle you All

Casey O'Roarty 3:02
right, everybody. Before I get into the content today, I have to tell you, you hear me talk about the living, joyful courage membership program a lot here on the show, I reference some of the conversations that we're having there and how powerful an experience it is. And Yay, I'm so excited this. The program is open again, so you can join us. You can join us. Doors are open to the living, joyful courage membership program from now until midnight on October 1. So that gives you a few days. Think about it. Come and join us. I'm just going to share a little bit with you from some of the gals that have been a part of the program. So one comes, one little bit comes from Mama Kensei. Being a member of this program has been such a fulfilling experience and more than I ever envisioned when I took the leap in January with Casey's thoughtful guidance, I'm learning tools to help shift my way of being with my children and others that I'm in relationship with. The tools have helped me better understand what may be underneath certain behaviors my boys engage in, and the best part is the circle of women that Casey has brought together and how we are able to share with and support each other and see that our own individual experiences are truly a collective experience. So I really appreciate Ken say and her feedback. Also heard from Mama Christy. I joined the membership group in July, and it has truly been a game changer for me in ways I'd never even imagined. Casey and the group members have shared so many supportive tools and insights. I am truly finding the parent and the person I want to be in addition this group A. Allows us to see our own individual experiences again as collective experiences. The confusion, worry and challenge of parenting is completely altered when you belong to a group of people who are committed to this journey and are there to offer support and insight when inevitable stumbles occur. Can't recommend the membership program highly enough. And then finally, Mama Lauren shared lJC is what was missing from my parenting practice. I already knew some of the tools could put them into practice some of the time, but the continual support offered by Casey and the amazing members of the group is what allow me to keep going when it gets hard, which is, which inevitable, it inevitably does. The space Casey created is truly special, and I'm so glad I joined. So again, the doors are open. If any of that, if there's ever been times where you've been listening and you've heard me reference the membership and you've gotten that little intuitive hit like, Huh? You know, I think I want to check that out now is the time these last three months of the membership are actually the themes of the month coming up are mindset October, we're going to focus on mindset. November, we're going to focus on respect. And December, we're going to focus on gratitude. And when you join the program, you will have access to all the past content. So I do a webinar every month for members, and I have been doing that since January. So when you join you get access to all the previous webinars, as well as the next three months, I have shifted things up. And so if you want to join now, it's a three month commitment for 159 and that gets you a monthly webinar, three monthly three different group coach calls that you can participate in, that all get recorded, a Facebook discussion group that's just for the membership, as well as weekly emails that keep you connected and keep you connected to each other and the content. And it's just such a fabulous program. I'm so so, so grateful for the community that has grown and fallen in love with each other over there.

You are interested. Head over to joyful courage.com/l. J C, that's joyful courage.com/l. J C, and you can register now.

Okay, friends this week, I have something on my mind. Well, it's interesting. I have something on my mind. I wrote all about it. I got kind of prepared for this recording, this podcast, and then I had the opportunity to go with my daughter into Seattle and go to the together live events that Glennon Doyle is touring around the country with and if you aren't familiar with Glennon Doyle, you need to Google her. I will have a link in the show notes. She is a writer and an activist and an amazing, amazing human who's having really powerful conversations that the world needs. And I was honored to be in the audience last night in Seattle to see her speak and to have my daughter there was really, really powerful, so that definitely some of the things that I heard last night are going to influence the content that I've created for today. Because, yeah, we are going to talk today about a little bit about fear and about belonging. You know that positive discipline is all about belonging and significance, right? You heard me talk about it last week when I interviewed Allison Smith. Thank you again for the feedback. Love there and and when I say it's about belonging and significance, what I mean is that the underlying foundation of positive discipline is the idea that human behavior is movement in the direction of belonging and significance, even when it looks wacky, even when you want to say, wait a minute, what that person wants to belong, then why are they responding to the world the way that they respond to the world? And we have to remember that humans are great perceivers, not great interpreters. So sometimes, you know, well, always, our behavior is always in response to our perception. Our interpretation of how we think we belong and whether or not we think we matter. Okay, so you know the positive parenting umbrella, which is a big umbrella, right? I mean, you Google positive parenting, and you will find an endless list of people that are writing and doing work underneath that umbrella, you'll notice that the theme and underlying theme of positive parenting is growing relationship with our children while also guiding them to learn from their mistakes. And it's really, it's really a mindset shift. And what I mean by that is that many of us grew up with this kind of well, they call it behaviorist mentality. So kids do something wrong, they get punished. Kids do the right thing, they get rewarded. My one of my favorite mentors, Jody McVitie, she talks about a shopping cart analogy. So, you know, behaviorists see the shopping cart as faulty like imagine walking a shopping cart down an aisle and it's and it's wonky. The wheels are weird, and it kind of meanders all over the place. And so to help the shopping cart go in a straight line, one side of the aisle, which is the punishment side, gets a little bit closer to keep it on the right track, and then while the other side, the reward side of the aisle, gets a little closer, so that the aisle gets narrower, and this is what keeps the shopping cart on the right track. Now that's one way of looking at keeping the shopping cart moving forward in this analogy, right. Another way to look at it is, is recognizing that the shopping cart's wheels are just fine. The shopping cart's wheels are just fine. And what we need to do is we need to help the shopping cart navigate the bumps in the road so that it can figure out. It can learn from experience how to move straight right, how to keep a straight line down the aisle. So it's really, instead of looking at external factors, of making the aisle thinner or external factors, external motivation for our kids, right of you know, punish, enough punishment and enough reward. If we balance that out perfectly, then our kids won't make any mistakes. It's a really big shift away from that. And instead, we get to say, hey, my kid is whole, creative and resourceful. My child is going to learn the life skills that they need through their mistakes and through their mistake their experiences, and I get to be a loving guide along the way. So it's a completely different come from that many of us grew up with. It's radically different. In fact, it's radically different than a lot of the way that the world is set up. But when we commit to parenting from this different place, all of our conditioning and all of our stories and self doubt can absolutely get in our way and move us away from trusting our instinct. Does that make sense? Right? Like, I mean, I know I'm not alone, right? You read an article, you read a book, you see someone speak, and you're so moved, you're so moved, and it lands for you, like, like lands in your soul. And, you know, this is it. This is the way that I want to be in relationship with other people. This is the way that I want to be in relationship with my children, and then right? And then our kids do what they do, like all the appropriate developmental things that they do, and inside of that relationship, it digs up all of our stuff, right? All of our conditioning, fear, like I mentioned earlier, fear shows up. We maybe it's just me. I know that it's not we get really controlling. How can I keep them from making big, life altering mistakes, you know? And then we're all of a sudden coming from a place of fear, feeling so confused as to what the right thing to do is when our kids get into mischief, we don't want to yell. We don't want to shame and blame on one hand, right? We don't want to be permissive doormats on the other hand, and we aren't totally clear or comfortable. What is in between those two extremes, and this is a really tough place to navigate. I've been reading Brene Brown's new book, braving the wilderness. She is. I mean, come on. I'm hoping that everyone out there, when I say Brene Brown is saying, Yes, I love her, because she's amazing, right? And if you don't know who Brene Brown is right now, press pause. Get online. Order brave the will braving the wilderness, or, really, anything, any of her books. Or if you don't want to buy a book, Google, Brene Brown, TED talk, and you will be enlightened. She talks a lot about in this new book, standing alone for what you believe in, and how that is, how we truly get a sense of belonging, that it's actually. Thing inside of us, being a part of a group, yes, while also being all of ourselves, and sometimes that requires us to stand alone, right? Yikes, standing alone can feel really vulnerable. And it also takes that scent. It takes something else, right? It takes trust, right? Like we have to really trust in what we believe in. And as a conscious parent, it requires us to trust our children, to trust the foundations, to trust that the relationship is enough. And it can be very scary, right? It can feel wobbly. It can feel like, oh, shit, Am I doing the right thing in so many ways. It is really against the grain, right? It puts other people into fear and questioning, and people don't like to be on the defense, so they go on the offense. Right? When we say, I am going to be a peaceful parent, I am going to be a conscious parent, I'm gonna use positive discipline, right? We start, I don't know if this happens to you, but we start talking about it with our family and our friends. They get very uncomfortable because, for a lot of reasons, it's their own stuff, right? But sometimes, when we hear about what other people are doing, we can go inward and think, Wait a minute, I don't do that. Am I wrong? I'm not wrong, so she must be wrong, so I'm going to let her know that she's wrong, right? And they go on the offense. And it became, and it can become, you know, it could sound like shaming and criticizing and talking about, oh, well, you're you're too soft, or you're enabling. And it's funny, because when I think of my vision for my children as a parent, my vision is for them to be confident, capable kids, to be able to navigate the world in a way that is kind and assertive, loving others while also being an interruption to the ugly ways that humans have treated each other, that humans are treating each other. I am all about my kids developing skills. I'm about making, you know, teaching them and allowing them to have experience around making things right when they make mistakes. I expect them to make mistakes right, because that's how they're going to learn to become accountable and responsible only if they make mistakes that they have to be accountable and responsible to right. I want them to learn how it feels to take ownership of their actions. I

want them to get familiar with discomfort. I want them to be familiar with the experience of moving forward in their life, even when discomfort is present. Right with two adolescents in my house right now, oh my gosh. I'm seeing how easy it is for them to be removed from what they truly want and believe and become swayed by their peers and the opinions of others. This was something that was so powerful last night, taking Rowan to see these incredible women, right? And I'm sorry that I don't have the names of the other gals that were on stage with Glennon, but it was, it was so beautiful. It was so positive. And that, you know, this theme that kept showing up was that you have to be who you are, you have to be who you are. You can't. We can no longer choose. We no longer need to see the choice being. I either can love myself or I love my family like we have to love ourselves. We have to choose to be who we are. We have to choose to do what's right for us. And the people around us will either come around or not, and that's their business. That's their business. We can we can send love to them even as we disagree, right? We can send love to them even as they maybe have opinions about us. And for my 14 year old to be sitting next to me hearing this from these beautiful, powerful, diverse women.

It was incredible, and it made me so excited for her to hear that message from someone else, right? It made me so excited for her, for those little seeds to be planting in a time of life, right? Remember 14? Oh my gosh. We just wanted to fit in. We just wanted to look like and be like everybody else. And often, when that was our story, we had to squash parts of ourselves. We had to silence a. Some of the messages that we were getting, you know, messages that could sound like, no, no, this isn't who I want to be, or this feels uncomfortable, or I don't like that. And last night was this opportunity to listen to these beautiful women say, No, you don't you can listen to that voice like that voice is your inner wisdom, and the more you listen to it, the better life you're gonna have, right? It's so easy, right? It's so easy, as the parent to make the mistake of getting all up in their grill, our kids grill, right? Telling them, well, just be yourself, you know, just be yourself. But who are they? Do they know? Is it a problem if they don't know who they are? Should they know who they are? I was just talking to my husband, you know, it's, it's different than like, oh, you know, this is a period of time where they find themselves. This is a period of life where they get to design themselves. They get to decide who do they want to be? Right? I'm realizing it is a small miracle when a tween or a teen does their own thing, forges their own path. But is it for some kids, it's a survival mechanism, right? The desire to belong is so strong at this age that when they feel on the outside, it can be devastating. But does it have to be devastating? I am exploring with my own kids what it means to help recognize their strengths, help them right the goodness, find the goodness that they bring to the world. We've talked about encouragement on here before, right and encouragement really being evidence based right, helping them see themselves, helping them see themselves and the strengths that they bring, and how to leverage that, to stand on their own and to really trust, trust themselves and trust the world around them. And it's so messy, so messy, they're so insecure, aren't we? All and other kids can be such dicks, but that's life, right? This is life, and self confident is the antidote to the dicks. Self acceptance is the first step towards really true, authentic self confidence. So again, as the parent trying to foster self acceptance, I know it has to start with me taking a deep look at my own self acceptance, my own practice of standing up for what I believe in, even when I'm the only voice, my own practice of recognizing when fear is in the way. And this, you know, this new era of my life where, you know, the teen years have begun, high school has started. I am getting lots and lots of practice of recognizing fear. And you know how fear shows up for me. I know that I'm in fear because my body gets tight, my jaw especially, and I want to control everything. I become a no, like, the answer is no, and I just, I want to. It's just like, this energetic wanting to, like, wrap my arms around everything and pull it in and hold it tight and not let it go. And if I want my children to listen to their soul's voice, to listen to their inner wisdom, to trust themselves, then I got to pay attention to that fear showing up, and I've got to release it, and I've got to trust, right? I need to be I need to hold the self confidence and the self acceptance that I want them to hold. So yeah, what are your thoughts on this? Did I just completely ramble. I may have just completely rambled for the last 20 minutes, but you know, this is what's coming up for me right now, and it's powerful, and it's it's real, it's right at the surface. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice. I've been kind of weepy these last two weeks or so, and and it's also really exciting. I'm I'm so excited to know that there are voices, loud voices in the world that are encouraging us to take really deep and important looks at ourselves and what we're bringing to our children, to our communities, to our worlds. It's really fabulous. And I think, by the way, I think that the together Live Tour Seattle was just the beginning. So I know that it's heading out to, I think, Philadelphia and Chicago and Nashville. So. Check it out. Check it out. Check the show notes. I'm going to put a link to their website in the show notes so you can see if it's coming anywhere near you. I would not miss it if it is. It was really powerful, and, yeah, in a really good time. So I would love for you all to let me know what you think about all this stuff, because I know that I'm not the only one that's you know, thinking about fear and control all that good stuff. I know I'm not the only one you guys. So let me know what you think head on over to live and love with joyful courage on facebook and join the discussion there. Let me know. Let me know what's on your mind. Let me know what your takeaways are, what your questions are, what your feedback is. I'd love to hear from you. Okay, one last thing. So one of the many beautiful things that happened last night at the event that I went to with Glennon Doyle, is that each person that got to go left with a copy of her book, Love warrior. So my daughter and I both got a copy. I already have love warrior. I already have love warrior. So I'm going to give away these two copies, and here's what you need to do to be eligible to give to get one of these two copies, I would love for you to head on over to iTunes and leave me a review. Let me know what you love about the podcast. Let me know how you found it. Let me know what it is that keeps you coming back, and you will be eligible for a drawing for one of these two books. And what I'm gonna do is the next solo show. So you have two weeks the next solo show, I will draw from the names of people who left a review on iTunes, and two people are gonna get have this book show up. Yay. All right, so get on that, get into iTunes, click on rate and review, and you'll figure out how to do it. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, as always for listening in. I'm so grateful to you. Make sure you come back next week, I'm gonna have another interview show for you, and I just knew what you are going that you are gonna love it. Are you listening to the podcast through the website, or are you a subscriber? So here's some great things about being a subscriber, okay, to the podcast, which means you go into iTunes or Google Play and you say, oh, there's joyful courage. I'm gonna hit subscribe, and then every week, when I publish a new show, it magically just shows up on your device. You get all previous shows, and there's been some bonus episodes that are not on the website. So bonus episodes are included when you're a subscriber and you get to feel super cool. Big love everybody. Big, humongous love to this entire glorious community of parents, of people, of humans who are doing our part in making the world a better place. I just can't tell you what an honor it is to get to show up for you every single week. Thank you for showing up for me. Thank you for listening. Thank you for going inside and doing the hard work of becoming an Ever more awake, aware human being. I love you.